TRAVELLED ROUTES TO LABRADOR 41 
sive, is to hire a schooner or a small steamer, and thus 
be entirely one’s own master. Few yachts have ever 
visited Labrador. The descriptions given of the welcome 
afforded by its coast to small vessels, even in such should-be 
authorities as the Encyclopedia Britannica, are so poetical 
in their freedom with the actual facts, that they are not 
calculated to entice any one who is bent on pleasure. As 
a matter of fact, if the charting were better, there could 
scarcely be a safer coast for the amateur skipper, for one 
can get a harbour in every stretch of ten miles along the 
whole length of the Atlantic coast. It is not necessary to 
spend a single night at sea the whole way from the Belle 
Isle Strait to Cape Chidley. Flitting from harbour to 
harbour, one can easily cover the entire coast.! 
The days are long in summer in these latitudes, and at 
night the clear atmosphere, the splendid northern lights, 
and the absence of strong tidal currents (except in the 
extreme north), make navigation still more easy. I have 
cruised the coast both in sailing boat and steamer, year 
after year, and have never been near losing a life yet. 
Three parties of friends, who have adopted this method of 
visiting Labrador in a hired schooner (one party having 
come two summers in succession), all give the same testi- 
mony.’ The fishermen who visit this coast year after year 
can give similar evidence; thousands of men, women, and 
children have for many years been cruising the outside coast 
? With one man in an open dingey I have, with comparative com- 
fort, traversed the coast from Battle Harbour to Rigolet, a distance 
of two hundred miles. 
* The gentlemen referred to are Americans from Boston, Mass., 
Concord, N.H., and Providence, R.I., respectively. 
